22/6/2006 - The end of the season produces some fantastic fishing

We have now moved base camp to Middle Varzuga as we closed Lower Varzuga last Friday and it is great to report that half way through our final week the catches have been superb.

Last week at Lower saw relatively difficult fishing as the fish had run so hard early on. Fortunately the Kitza camp fished extraordinarily well and the first group led by James Bowdidge landed 159 fish for their three days to the seven rods followed by 151 fish being landed to the six rods who swapped over from Lower on the Monday night. Lower finished with 24 to the first group and 26 salmon landed by the Bowdidge party which was supplemented by a lovely pioneering trip to the Upper Kitza on Thursday which was fascinating and something we hope to expand.

Kitza is still fishing beautifully this week and the water has remained in superb shape. For the first three days of this week the four rods have taken 176 fish even though three of these rods are new to the river.

Middle had another superb week last week with the Belgian team of 11 rods accounting for 505 fish which included a lovely fish caught on the last morning by one of the rods in their swimming trunks before boarding the helicopter home!

The first half of this week has seen the seven rods of Nigel Hawkins' party taking 176 salmon including a beautiful 12 pound fish to Serena Haszard. This team is swapping over with the Ralph Congreve party who have been at Pana for these three days where they have banked 162 fish to the eight rods, many of whom are new to the river and this is an excellent score by any measure.

Pana was quite simply on fire last week with the 8 vastly experienced rods taking an outstanding total of just over 800 fish for the week. If anything demonstrates the value of returning to a beat having learnt lessons the years before it is this week.

Summer is now certainly here but unlike other rivers that simply would not fish in these high temperatures the Varzuga continues to offer some wonderful fishing and whilst it will be nice to be home it is always a wrench to leave a river that has fished so well all season.

Next week we will send the final report and then, a little later on, post the season review onto the website so that everyone can review this amazing season.